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Southwest Grilled Chicken Salad

Along with our Chopped Chicken Salad, this Southwest Grilled Chicken Salad is another weekly staple. It has a ton of flavor, loaded with tomatoes, black beans, corn, grilled chicken, and a cilantro-lime vinaigrette dressing.

First, we prepare the chicken in the same way as our Chicken Fajitas. Season the chicken well with some pollo asado seasoning. We prefer to use Chef Merito Chicken Seasoning. Just get your hands in there and make sure you rub in the seasonings very well onto your meat.

The next key is to get your grill or grill pan very hot! We use a Lodge Cast-Iron Square Grill Pan for indoor cooking. With your pan hot, add a light brush of oil, and then your chicken. We like to put it in at a diagonal. Then after about 3-4 minutes, flip it over keeping the same diagonal. 3-4 minutes more flip again but turn it to the opposite diagonal. Finally, another 2 minutes flip the meat, and wait 2 minutes more before taking it off the heat to rest. You’ll be rewarded with beautiful diamond grill marks! Be sure to let your meat rest for about 5 minutes, this will let the juices redistribute into the meat instead of running out all over your cutting board. We like to wrap the meat up in some foil and forget about it while we work on the rest of the salad.

The rest of the salad comes together very quickly. Open your cans of beans and corn, and drain them in a fine mesh strainer. We like to rinse off the corn and beans to remove the liquid they are stored in. Once those are done, cut your tomatoes in half, then remove the seeds and pulp, and chop into cubes. Lastly, cut the Romaine lettuce into thin ribbons. We like to cut the lettuce and then put it all in a salad spinner and fill with water. This lets us rinse out the lettuce very well, then train in the same container. Make sure to spin the lettuce once, dump out the water, and spin again. If you don’t already have a salad spinner this OXO Good Grips Green Salad Spinner is amazingly simple to use.

Right before serving we spoon over the simple cilantro-lime vinaigrette. We start by finely chopping a bunch of cilantro. Then we juice 3 limes and put it together with the cilantro. Then add 1/4 cup of olive oil, season well with salt and pepper. Then add garlic powder, chili powder, cayenne pepper, cumin, and sweeten with a couple drops of honey. We whisk all the ingredients together, or shake them in a container, and spoon over the salad.

Ingredients:

2 Heads Romaine Lettuce, washed and chopped

2 boneless-skinless Chicken breasts

1 can of whole kernel Corn, rinsed and drained

1 can of Black Beans, rinsed and drained

2 Tomatoes, seeded and chopped

Dressing:

2 Limes juiced

1/4 cup Olive oil

1 bunch Cilantro, chopped

1/4 Teaspoon Cayenne pepper

1/2 Teaspoon Chili powder

1/2 Teaspoon ground Cumin

1 Teaspoon honey

Salt & Pepper to taste

Combine all dressing ingredients in a bowl and whisk, or in a small container that you can shake before serving.